Nostalgia

Tonight is the inauguration of Cine de La Diferencia in Cuenca, the gay and lesbian film festival I helped plan last year. I can see the Teatro Sucre, right across from the Parque Calderon and imagine the flurry of costume emergencies, cash box preparations, one person asking the other "where the hell is the champagne for the toast," and everyone dressed up in Sunday best.

The pictures are from last year, when the kids I worked with put together these beautiful dance combinations, these amazing artistic expressions about sexuality. The organization was totally lacking, there were countless juvenile conflicts, we didn't get the tickets sales we wanted, the publicity happened late, the press we got was totally homophobic. But we freaking did it. All sorts of people came watched films and talked about sexuality. Almost a year out, back in New York, with my head full of details about a new all-consuming job, the finer points of what went right and wrong are so much less important than the fact that we pulled it off at all.

Congratulations to Cuenca Diversa! Como me gustaría estar allá con ustedes hoy.

Sustainability

My Peace Corps Project is plugging along with this years' iteration of Cine de la Diferencia. Thanks to everyone who contributed to support this so generously.

That awkward conversation

You know when you have a fight with someone you are very fond of and several months go by where you don't really talk, but in the end you decide that you remember all the things that are great about about the person and you start to make little overtures and then suddenly there you are having coffee and its exciting and uncomfortable all at the same time?

That is how I think this post might be. Not that I had a fight with my blog, or anyone who reads it, but after so many months its difficult to just pick up and act like everything has been all hunky-dory this whole time.

I mean, everything has been fine, it is just that I have been very neglectful. This has to do with having a job which sucks up way too much time in front of the computer, and way too much of the energy that makes blogging fun. But I fear that Jane will take me off her blogroll if I no longer post and so here is a commitment to getting back into to the rhythm of documenting my New York life.

Saint Valentine

Jane and I went to Philadelphia for Valentine's Day. It was the only city accessible by bus where we didn't know anyone we would feel obligated to see, and being as it was Valentine's Day, we decided to try and make it a romantic retreat. It was a very lovely weekend, with a seven course Moroccan meal on Saturday and a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where we watched tourist after tourist imitating Rocky Marciano at the top of the steps. Yesterday, when we were wandering over towards the Italian Market, we stumbled across the Magic Garden a massive mosaic work installation. It is right next to an AME Zion church and while we wandered around, we could hear the gospel choir and the percussion from next door.

Living out of boxes

When I went to the Peace Corps, my father fearlessly agreed to keep my files, receive mail for me and generally trouble shoot any urgent financial or legal issues that emerged. Fortunately, everything was pretty well under control when I left and as I slowly assumed responsibility for my life again I schlepped all my things between North Carolina and New York, a little bit at the time. The boxes with all my papers (tax returns, bank statements, etc.) posed more of a problem. It was in a relatively contained plastic files box, but it was really too heavy to carry as a carry-on on the airplane. Getting things delivered in New York is one of those things that should be easy but in fact always poses some unforeseen challenge. So when my father sent this important box of files, Priority Mail, announcing that it should arrive on Saturday, I thought the surest thing would be to leave a note for the mailman, telling him to just leave the box in the mail room. I would be around Saturday evening at some point to grab it and all would be well. The thing is, the box didn't come. And the next day it didn't come. Nor the next. Usually the USPS leaves you a little beige ticket saying that you have a package and please come and get it, but there was no beige ticket. At this point, I started to haunt the mail room and harass my super with plaintive inquiries and incredulous looks. It occurred to me that this box was an identity theft starter kit, with my tax returns from the last three years, several complete sets of billing statements and all my bank statements, providing all sorts of relevant data about my spending patterns and whereabouts. My living will and my medical proxy form were even in there. Jane helpfully pointed out that this this was the last thing anyone was likely to make use of, but I imagined the worst. For 2-3 days, I was convinced that the box had been left in the building and had fallen into the hands of some interloper who even as I spoke was planning to become me, start several credit cards in my name, buy several plane tickets, and generally create a mess which would take, at the very least, lots of time on the phone with unkind people in call centers to clean up. At this point I hid my blog profile and changed my security settings on facebook.

Fortunately Pop had sent it insured which meant there was a tracking number and when I presented the fax copy of the insurance slip, they produced the box forthwith. I didn't even ask why there had been no beige slip. I have never been so happy to lug a 20 lb. box cross town.

Meeting of friends

I have been introduced to several of Jane's friends in the last week or so and she has been introduced to several of mine, including virtual email introductions in which Jane didn't actually have to utter a word. As far as we know, we both passed our respective tests. I mean, I might be understating it a little bit, (as one tends to do in the blog format.) It's all gone very well.

Office space

After yesterday's celebration, today was back to the grind and me staring at the to-do list I wrote Monday, unable to decipher my handwriting. Does that post it say "board" or "band?" And what could either one of those have meant?

Today on this day we will always remember

At my church on Sunday we heard excerpts from A Letter from a Birmingham Jail, The Strength to Love, one the speeches written about Vietnam and several of Martin Luther King's sermons. It was much more moving (and as a history geek, more entertaining) than a sermon might have been. The timing Obama's inauguration and MLK's birthday lends itself to the sense of history, the solemnity, as my mom says, the historicicity of it all. King's speech on Vietnam reminded me of how not only did he speak out with regard to the domestic policy but also what he said about how the United States engages with the world, and how much it speaks to where we have been over the last six years in Iraq. We sang Lift Every Voice and Sing, also sometimes called the Black National Anthem, which often chokes me up. We also sung it on the Sunday following the election, when my minister prefaced it by saying, "Let's think about all the people who gave their lives to come to 'a place for which our fathers sighed.'" And that was when I wept, wept about the election.

And so today, when Obama made a speech which I believe has the capacity to get control of the frame of domestic and foreign policy at least for the outset of his presidency and the benediction began with a recitation of Lift Every Voice and Sing, I feel like we are in a very good place, and that it is a very important day.